This is a mostly entertaining and reasonably realistic feeling espionage novel with newly returned to duty operative Matt Helm flying off to Sweden to track down a bad guy and take him out. It’s suitably twisty turny and and has some decent action and dialogue. Unfortunately it’s also unpleasantly misogynistic, with hero Helm beating a raping a female character at one point to bring her into line. ( )

"The Wrecking Crew " is #2 of the Matt Helm series. It is a spy thriller of the cold war era and lacks the page turning quality of the modern age. What did surprise was the gems of wisdom that are still relevant today. I found the language had too much bravado, reminding me of the gangster movies of the 1930's. ( )

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Title: The Wrecking Crew
Series: Matt Helm #2
Author: Donald Hamilton
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 272
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Matt Helm is back working as part of the Wrecking Crew, that shadowy blacker than black government organization that carries out assassinations against targets around the world who are enemies of the United States.

Helm's wife served him separation papers after finding out about his secret past during World War II and with nothing else to occupy him, Matt returns to the only thing he really knows. This time he is sent after a shadowing agent working for Russia that took out a valuable double agent for the United States. Hooking up with the dead man's wife, Helm uses her to find his way to the Mastermind. With lots of twists and turns (who is working for who, are the good guys actually the good guys?), Helm bulls through it all in Norway. Using women like sanitizer soap, Helm eventually gets his man.

The book ends with his wife sending him signed divorce papers and a note that she and the boys are now with another man, a “good” man.

My Thoughts:

I liked the story. The twisty turny Cold War aspect was great. It was fun, it was thrilling and it kept the suspense up right until the end when Matt shoots the Mastermind.

Sadly, that just wasn't enough. Helm's sleeping with multiple women while still married is not something that I want to give countenance too. Someone as controlled as Helm CAN control himself in the area of sex. He simply chooses not to and I consider that a fatal flaw in a book character.

Throw in that he's pretty “Awww, whatever” about his wife leaving him and the fate of his 3 children and he just sickened me. When he found out they were all with another man they liked, he was like “Oh good, now I don't have to worry”.

Very disappointed with how this turned out. Matt Helm is no hero and characters like him, with an empty moral framework, do more to destroy this country than any hardline communist ever could. So I'm done with this series and will be moving on.

★☆☆☆½ ( )

In this, the second book of the series, Helm's character is firmly set. He's in Sweden, so we get a fair amount of comparison between the two countries, what he thinks makes sense & what doesn't. More, he is working with another agency who think his job - find & kill the bad guy - makes him a monster. Several darkly ironic situations arise proving the need for men like Helm & why his service exists. They might not like or respect him, but when the bad guys don't play by their rules, they need him - an overriding theme of the series.

Hamilton nails traveling across the Swedish landscape & wilderness. I'm currently reading [b:On Guns and Hunting|13631956|On Guns and Hunting|Donald Hamilton|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336019814s/13631956.jpg|19240844], a collection of his hunting stories. I've read two so far, "Arctic Hunt" & "Hunting the Great Alg" (or something like that). Both were published in magazines & bits of each appear in this book. In other words, he describes walking across the land so well because he actually did so. Of course, he was hunting birds & moose, but it still...

This book is not without it faults, but luckily the most glaring didn't arise until the end. A character has her hands tied behind her & yet stoops to pick a package up off the ground. There's a bit more going on, but I don't want to spoil it. I guess this goof in logic proves that this edition wasn't edited at all. I don't recall noticing this before which is rather strange, but I checked my original paperback, published in 1960, and it is identical in this respect. This is the new edition that just came this week (Feb2013).

Anyway, this is one of the few times Hamilton screws up with a logical detail of this sort. It's one of the reasons I like his books so much. He usually gets things like that just right which lends to the realism of the stories. Helm doesn't have a lot of gadgets, mostly makes do with a lot of common sense, logic, & ruthless determination. He's no superman - swears that hitting someone with his fist is pretty useless except for show. He does know some tricky moves, but since his opponent usually does as well, they tend to even out.

Overall, it was a great adventure for Helm & sets up the continuing character well. It is one of the few books where his age is specifically mentioned - he's 36 - considered a bit old by many for this game, especially since he hasn't been part of it in 15 years, since WWII.

Please help support this wonderful series by buying them. If they do well, we should get to read the final book in the series that Hamilton wrote shortly before he died. The next book is due in August, the fourth in October. Let's hope they stick to the schedule.
( )

Another cold war thriller set back in the early 60's in Sweden. Helm, the hero, is a government assassin sent to kill off a spy who has proven too deadly for the other spies - a typical job for him. He doesn't mow people down in rows like a movie James Bond, but carefully takes out just those he needs to. It's not easy. He's tough & well trained, but so are his opponents. He has to be careful not to offend the local sensibilities too much. It is peacetime & he's a foreign operative in a friendly country with limited latitude.

As usual, Matt Helm's tough logic carried him through a dangerous situation, made more so by soft-headed politics. There were several memorable scenes, but one epitomizes Helm's thinking & how at odds it is with the rest of the world. At one point, he must kill a man, a guard for the bad guy. His ally exclaims, "You shot him in the back!"
Helm agrees. "He was facing that way." No apologies or worries on his part. He needed the man dead & the direction the man was facing wasn't important to him at all. He's extremely pragmatic.

One of Hamilton's strengths is his ability to pick out pieces of another country & serve them up in choice bits with his hero in the midst. There wasn't any doubt that he'd visited the country & walked through the areas he described; both the towns & the countryside. (Actually, he was born there.) He gave me a feel for it with a few, well chosen words.

See these pages for more of Hamilton's work, about him, & the latest releases.
http://www.matthelmbooks.com/intro.html
http://www.benish-industries.com/hamilton/hamilton.php
http://goodreadergonebad.net/donaldhamilton/ ( )